The Department of English will be hosting a Graduate Conference April 12-13th in Shelby Center Room 301 titled “Forms of Life: Reading Humans, Animals, and Machines in a Posthuman World.” The keynote speaker will be Cary Wolfe, Bruce and Elizabeth Dunlevie Professor and Department Chair of English at Rice University.
Topics of the conference may include, but are not limited to: How do we define the human today in the age of artificial intelligence, companion species, and genetic modification? What is the status of the subject if the human is pulled back into a mesh wherein the animal, the cyborg, the alien, the woodland, bacteria and other life reside? What is the state of the body in the wake of genetic and prosthetic reorientation? What constitutes community if the human elides with other forms of life? How can we read animals, plants, and even the vibrant matter of stone in a reconceived, polycentric environment? How might all of these questions inform older texts (ancient, medieval, early modern) seen as emerging prior to the scientific and technological innovations we view in the present?
If you have any questions, please contact Joseph Taylor or Alanna Frost in the Department of English.